Our Staff

Daniel Clay Russ, Editor

Daniel Clay Russ traces his love of military history to his father, Sgt. Marvin Edward Russ who served in the US Army Air Corps during WWII. His brother Harvey was in artillery for a while during Vietnam and later transferred to Signal Corps. His brother Stephan served in the Navy on the USS Wasp and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station.

For 6 years, Daniel was a creative director working on the USAF account and for 6 years he worked on Allison Gas Turbine Division of GM.

Kenny Sink

Kenny Sink is a famous advertising art director now currently residing in Studley, Virginia. He also an accomplished Civil War relic hunter and an expert on the Civil War.

Steve Miller

Steve is a famous advertising Creative Director who has worked on Southwest Airlines, the US Air Force, and other major accounts. He is a private pilot and an avid military history buff.

Matt McDougall

Matt is a digital marketing expert who has written a history of the Punic Wars. He is a military historian extraordinaire.

Folks, We are seaching for a photo of Edward Heinemann for a section we are doing in our newspaper ( the san Diego Union-Tribune) on San Diego being the birthplace of naval aviation and the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the effort. Your site has a photo of Mr. Edward Heinemann and I am writing seeking permission to use it once in our newspaper and on our website as a part of this report.
Thanks for your time and consideration
Robert York
Director of Photo and Video
619-293-2208robert.york@uniontrib.com

I would like to suggest starting a new category that I think might be of great interest for further research and study. The current arms race in Asia (increase in defense spending in Asia), and the areas of the military that these Asian nations are improving upon. The Asian nations that have dramatically increased defense spending in recent years include but are not limited to: People’s Republic of China, Republic of China, India, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar,and even Russia & Australia, which may not be strictly Asia but are still key countries in the Asia-Pacific Region.

The consequences of such an arms race should be considered, on my part I have been monitoring weapon systems development and the modernizing of some of the militaries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The photo you have of T.E. Lawrence at the top of article “Lawrence Of Arabia Helped Mastermind Guerrilla Warfare In The Mideast”: could you let me know if it is free to use or where you sourced it from? Apologies if your answer to the previous post regarding images already answers all questions in this regard.
Many thanks

I don’t own it. Again, since this is a military history blog and we generally take images off of the Library of Congress. The owners can always request we take them off but no one has since we have been publishing.

Working on family genealogy to be given to local historical societies, nothing for sale or personal monetary gain. Is it possible to include an article from this site if link to your site is identified? Many thanks. Amazing blog you have!

Yesterday a local TV commentator attributed the following statistics to your group, and I wonder if you can direct me to the study that resulted in these statistics?

“Frank, I always try to stick with the facts. According to statistics from the Civilian Military Intelligence Group, handgun deaths in the United States reach 10,000 annually
and another 700,000 are injured. 20 years ago we all played with lawn darts. Three people were killed and lawn darts were banned. Something for you, Frank, to think about.
The Virginia Tech shooter shot himself in the head.”

With global warming reaching crisis levels, it may be that the country will want a President who will cut emissions. Of all the candidates who are likely to do so, perhaps Lindsey Graham is the best one to insist upon a safer Iran deal than the current one.

Perhaps you could urge your blog followers to vote for him and to write letters to newspapers in support of him.

Ted Cruz is the most likely candidate to re-negotiate the deal which allows Iran to house nuclear weaponry at suspected (as opposed to known) sites, and which allows them 24 days notice in which to hide them. Donald Trump and John Kasich have also spoken recently about re-negotiation, but they have not been as consistent about it as Ted Cruz has been.

Please urge those of your followers with pending primaries to vote for Ted Cruz, and to write letters to their local newspapers in support of him.

(We can also suggest to the Republican committees of CO, ND, PA, WY, American Samoa, and Guam—and of the nation as a whole–that they urge the unbound delegates to vote for Cruz. Similar appeals can be made to those who’ve dropped out.)

It appears that Hillary Clinton is going to win the Presidential race. Therefore, to keep us from nuked by Iran, we should write to her and suggest that she is more likely to stay over the top if she agrees to tear up the Iran agreement and push for one that would call for immediate inspection of not only the known military sites, but the suspected ones as well. Some experts say the Iranian government can’t hide everything within 24 days, but other experts say they can. Thus to be on the safe side, we should not have a waiting period.

We should not only write to her; we should also write to newspapers urging other people to write to her, too.

If we don’t convince her by the time the election rolls around, we should write to her some more. We can mention that the Iranian violations regarding missiles shows us that we can’t trust them and that we need the immediate inspections.

I just stumbled on your article in War History Online about the Berlin Airlift. And found several fundamental mistakes in there.

Originally published at civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com on May 31, 2009. / By Daniel Russ.

I have not studied the resources you mention below, but it seems the author)s) have not studied or understood local maps and some background history. Though a small kid then, only two years old, I lived there through the Airlift and all of the Cold War until after the fall of the communist block.

On several occasions the article cites East Berlin (politically and geographically) when it was West-Berlin… this makes a world of a difference. It neglects that Berlin was an enclave inside East Germany, divided by the 4 powers (USA, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union). The latter had all of East Germany under its control including the eastern half of Berlin.

The initial start for the Berlin Blockade (meaning West Berlin and with that the stationed US, British and french forces) cutting off the supply lines just just over 2 years after WWII was the introduction of a new currency in West Germany by the western powers. They also brought the new Deutschmark to West Berlin (there the bills were perforated with a capital “B”).

West Berlin was then cordoned off by the Russians and East Germans along the lines of the later Berlin Wall (1963) and all other borders to the West.

Back to the article:
— The Russian engineers were possibly pulled from East Germany (maybe West Berlin, but not West Germany).
— Tempelhof Airport is in West Berlin, not East.
— Steam rollers were re-assembled in West Berlin, not East Berlin… only West Berlin was blocked, not the East, which was part of the blocking forces.
— 121,000 tons is not enough to have a population of 2.5 millions live “comfortably”, especially when the biggest part of the load was coal.
— It is the first time I hear that US fighters were escorting the transport planes… I doubt that this is true or might only have happened as a short test.
— What forcibly relocated Germans?

There are a lot of other flaws and errors in this article, just studying a map of Berlin from Cold War times would show many of these. By always mixing up East and West and the political side stories this gives a whole different impression and promotes wrong reasoning.

Nonetheless, the Luftbrücke was a heroic deed by the Western allies under the the lead of the US and a real tour de force on crews and equipment and a masterwork of logistics.

While I understand why you wrote, “I realized that there is an elephant in the room in histories of WW2 and that an insight into this blind spot is needed to truly understand WW2 – to prevent history from repeating itself.”, and had agreed with that understanding for years, I do not agree with it now, as silly as it may seem.

There are lessons in life more painful than death itself. The count of the lessons in life more painful than death itself is more than a human can count in a lifetime, let alone remember the lessons to be learned. The solution is that we must choose to do the right things, for the right reason. Only one thing to remember. “Life is Most Important in Life is The Most Important Truth in Life. If any thought, word, or action does not agree with that truth it means that those choices are not in the best interest of life in general and are a lie. There is never an exception. Case, and point: A person would need to prove that truth, untrue, without ever using life, to refute it.

We each must do the very best we honestly can to value life more. That will vary from person to person, given their honest living requirements actually are, but the ‘most important truth’ stays consistent. Doing the best we honestly can is, quite factually, the best we can honestly do.